Analysis of To Harriet -- It Is Not Blasphemy To Hope That Heaven
Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 (Horsham) – 1822 (Lerici)
It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven
More perfectly will give those nameless joys
Which throb within the pulses of the blood
And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth
Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou
Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,
Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits
Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space
When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn
Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,
Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven,
And Heaven is Earth?--will not thy glowing cheek,
Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine,
And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame
Of my corporeal nature, through the soul
Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give
The longest and the happiest day that fate
Has marked on my existence but to feel
ONE soul-reviving kiss...O thou most dear,
'Tis an assurance that this Earth is Heaven,
And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed
Which springeth here beneath such love as ours.
Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,
But ours shall not be mortal! The cold hand
Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds
Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse
Of common souls lives but a summer's day;
It dies, where it arose, upon this earth.
But ours! oh, 'tis the stretch of Fancy's hope
To portray its continuance as now,
Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age
Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given
A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow
Which blazing on devotion's pinnacle
Makes virtuous passion supersede the power
Of reason; nor when life's aestival sun
To deeper manhood shall have ripened me;
Nor when some years have added judgement's store
To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire
Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then
Shall holy friendship (for what other name
May love like ours assume?), not even then
Shall Custom so corrupt, or the cold forms
Of this desolate world so harden us,
As when we think of the dear love that binds
Our souls in soft communion, while we know
Each other's thoughts and feelings, can we say
Unblushingly a heartless compliment,
Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world,
Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve
That knits our love to virtue. Can those eyes,
Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart
To purify its purity, e'er bend
To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears?
Never, thou second Self! Is confidence
So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt
The mirror even of Truth? Dark flood of Time,
Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not
By month or moments thy ambiguous course.
Another may stand by me on thy brink,
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken,
Which pauses at my feet. The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being; if I wake no more,
My life more actual living will contain
Than some gray veteran’s of the world's cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,
Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude,
Freedom, Devotedness and Purity!
That life my Spirit consecrates to you.
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110011110 1100111101 1101010101 0101110011 01000101111 1111010101 1111010101 11010111010 1101110101 1111111111 1101010111 01110111110 01011111101 10111111 0101010101 11110101 111111111 01000100111 1111010111 110101111 11010111110 010010110101 1110111110 10011110101 11011110011 1111011101 110101010 1101110101 1111010111 1101101111 1011010011 1101010111 110111010 0111001001 11011100 11001001010 11011111 110111101 111111011 11110101010 1101010111 1101011101 11110011101 1101011011 1110011101 1111101111 10101010111 1101010111 1010100 1111100101 1111011 11101110111 10110100111 1101100101 111111011 1011011100 1101011111 01010111111 111111101 11110101001 0101111111 0101010111 1101110111 01110000101 0111011111 11110010101 11110010111 1101011 110101001 10011010 1010100 11110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 3,023 |
Words | 542 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 72 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 2,448 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 537 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:45 min read
- 90 Views
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"To Harriet -- It Is Not Blasphemy To Hope That Heaven" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29302/to-harriet----it-is-not-blasphemy-to-hope-that-heaven>.
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